Sandra Krautwaschl, of Graz, Austria, was astonished by the amount of plastic trash on the beaches of Croatia, where recycling is not done on the scale of her native country. She wondered what it would be like to not have all that plastic in her family's daily life.

The Krautwaschl-Rabensteiners decided to try and live a normal life without plastic, for a short period of time, to see if it could be done. Only what started as a month-long experiment eventually turned into a way of life. The first thing they did was try to eliminate all plastic objects from their home, in Eisbach. The front cover of Sandra’s book is a photo of her family surrounded by all their plastic possessions in front of their house. It says a lot about how important a role plastic has in our everyday lives. Next, they had to find alternatives, starting with wooden-handle toothbrushes, metal milk canisters, and food packaged in metal, paper or glass. They admit this radical change was difficult at first, and required ample research, but it also altered their entire shopping philosophy, in that they learned to stop and think if they really needed a product before buying it.

Read about how they did it at Oddity Central. Link -via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Sandra Krautwaschl)